Real Estate Trends – Burlington, Massachusetts #2

Introduction:

Welcome back again for our latest real estate market trend report. For those of you that are here for the first time what we do in these reports is examine the real estate market in a city or town in Massachusetts or New Hampshire to evaluate the current conditions. We do this by looking at the changes in three key metrics year over year for the municipality to see how the market has changed and then evaluate what those observations might mean for that market moving forward.

Market Trends in Burlington, MA – February 2015 and 2016:

The Burlington, MA market has fallen off substantially since last year. The average prices were down significantly and the median prices were down even more. The days on market were also up quite a lot as well, and the initial numbers might be a bit understated. Inventory was up a little with 7 sales in February of 2015 and up to 9 in February 2016.

Average Listing Prices:

We will first start off by looking at the average listing price. In Burlington, MA the average listing price in February 2015 was $579,786. This was down to $480,467 in February 2016. This gives a very big decrease of 17.13% year over year.

Looking at the median prices we see that it was higher in 2015 and lower in 2016. For February of 2015 the median listing price for Burlington, MA was $589,000 and in February 2016 it was $439,900 which now gives an even larger decrease of 25.31%.

Average Sale Prices:

The next thing we will be looking at is the average sale prices. The average sale price for in Burlington, MA in February of 2015 was $590,862 and in February 2016 that was down to $474,156. That gives a bit higher decrease of 19.75% compared to the average list price.

We see a different pattern than we did with the listing prices here for the median sale prices, where this time both were less than the averages. For February of 2015 the median sales price for Burlington, MA was $575,000 and in February 2016 it was $440,001 giving another larger decrease of 23.48%.

Everything indicates that prices are down substantially in Burlington, MA in February. However, there is a bit of a gap between the averages and the medians. So at a minimum we would say prices are down the 17-20% seen in the averages. However when analyzing real estate prices it is more common to use the median values, so the bigger drops seen there are probably more accurate. Looking at the medians the range there is 23.5-25.5%, which is where it seems like the prices have fallen to. I would say that it is probably closer to the bottom of the range though since that is where the median sale price fell.

Average Days on Market:

Finally the last metric we look at are the average days on market, which is the measure of how long it takes for a property to sell in the current market. For Burlington, MA the average days on market in February of 2015 were 44.00 and the average days on market for February 2016 were 106.56 for a huge 142.18% increase.

In 2015 there was a property with 188 days on market; this was more than the other 6 properties combined and over 61% of the total days on market for all 7 Properties. When removed the new calculation for the remaining 6 properties gives an average days on market of 20.00.

Using the adjusted numbers we now get a ridiculously high increase of 432.8%. This does not change the general conclusion of the days on market were up a huge amount only the magnitude of the change.

Burlington, Massachusetts Summary:

The Burlington, Massachusetts real estate market is down a good amount since last year. The average prices were down a lot with the median prices being down by an even more substantial amount. The days on market were also up significantly, some of the biggest we have seen in any of these reports, which further supports a conclusion of the market being down a significant amount.

In summary if you are looking to sell a house in Burlington, MA now you should expect to get much less for it than you would have gotten last year. You can also expect it to take a much, much more time to sell compared to last year as well. With the huge increase in days on market sellers might want to consider selling at a discount from the already reduced prices to avoid sitting on their property for a very long time.